Arsenic Mine Part 2 (progress)

Below are images of part of a triptych I am working on for a forthcoming exhibition. The images show progress from initial marking out of the painting on the ground to the blocking in process. More images to come and info on upcoming exhibition!

Redruth and the world of tomorrow...

Having just finished my last exhibition at the Whitespace gallery and I am now in the process of making work for the next one I am having in June. This exhibition will be quite an exciting event involving artists from a wide variety of countries and backgrounds/styles. Watch this space for more info...

As part of my proposal I plan to show a quadriptych of paintings with the each showing a different aspect of the others paintings in some respect. I am examining what I think of large scale utopian dreams with the often harsh reality of these movements. The obvious ones being nazism, communism and 60s building programmes. 

Despite this I am an idealist! I love both the run down gritty side of the city but also find the architecture of various utopian dreams fascinating as well.

To this end I am painting the images below as part of the series of 4:

Redruth, Cornwall. This image is a painting of a building that stood next to the main station in Redruth, in a twist of fate the building apparently no longer exists. I like the idea that my painting shows a ghost image of what was and that in the duration of painting this it ceased to exist.. With this image I am looking at the anomalies that exists within a culture such as our own in Britain, at once vastly wealthy and yet deprivation and ruin still exists. A non-utopian ideal.

'The world of a past-present, today', collaged imagery. This painting is taking various images and collaging them together. In this picture I am looking at the utopian ideal of clean lines, straight buildings and huge plazas. But even in this image I am looking at creating a sense of unease, the image is empty - no people or any nature either. And the building could just as easily be a prison as a modernist housing block.

The sky was an important element for me in this painting - lifting the eye above the area at the bottom of the painting but also heightening the sense of emptiness of the city. 

I hope to show these paintings plus 2 more and one large piece (space permitting!) in the next exhibition.

The Tin Mine

I finished the Cornish Tin mine painting a couple of weeks ago, thought I would post the results on here. After some painstaking dot action I was able to complete the grassy foreground area. I was most pleased with the (subtle) results. No one will probably even notice the dots, I am however quite happy to know they are there and that there are literally hundreds of them. Next painting I do it on I should really keep a count and mark it somewhere on the canvas.. Anyway here are some pics:

This is the whole painting, my normal camera lens went haywire so I used another camera. After 5 years it has lasted surprisingly long, especially considering the bashes it took. Anyway hence the vignetting on the image. I added in a few details - the shadows and the moon. This was to add some more dimension to the painting.

Dots in the sky, dots on the ground...

I was back in Cornwall recently and was within a stones throw of the site this painting represents. It was interesting to go back and see the area again after over a year.

The moon and shadows.

Tin Sea